“Fox & Friends” host Elisabeth Hasselbeck took to Twitter on Tuesday to compare the controversy over the NFL’s handling of domestic abuse cases and the White House’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack on American facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

“Imagine if everyone that asked for transparency in the #nfl @nfl Demanded that same #transparency in our #government #Benghazi,” Hasselbeck wrote on Twitter.

….

Fox News has been criticized for what some call an obsession with placing the blame for Benghazi on the Obama administration. According to a study conducted by liberal watchdog group Media Matters, Fox News’ primetime lineup ran 1,098 segments on Benghazi in the first 20 months following the attacks, including 281 segments alleging a “coverup” by the Obama administration.

Fox “News”? Obsessed with pinning blame for something on Obama? Perish the thought! Inconceivable, even. We all know that Fox “News” is just another arm of the liberal media, after all. (By the way, that is an actual statement I heard while listening in to an argument at a local Tea Party event. Yes, I know that it is not a common belief, even for the true lunatic fringe, but I still get a kick out of knowing someone out there actually believes that it is true. Someone who votes.) That being said, one can kind of understand why members of Fox & Friends would want to draw attention elsewhere, after the masterful way their male hosts handled the issue the day TMZ released The Video:

Hasselbeck is not the only “Fox & Friends” host to stir controversy while weighing in on the NFL’s domestic abuse problem.

Last week, her co-hosts, Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy, joked about a lesson to be learned from the video showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking his then-fiancee unconscious in an elevator.

“I think the message is, take the stairs,” Kilmeade said during a discussion of the video.

“The message is, when you’re in an elevator, there are cameras,” co-host Steve Doocy added.

I have to admit that if I was unlucky enough to find myself on camera with them while they made those comments, I may have yelled “Benghazi!!!” as well. Anything so those words wouldn’t stick in people’s memory. Of course, this being Fox & Friends, those comments, no matter how offensive most of us may find them, more than likely drew laughs, guffaws, chuckles, high fives, and cries of “right on, ain’t no camera in the stairs.”

Now that I have seen the light, thanks to Elisabeth Hasselbeck, you may be noticing some changes around here. While the URL will remain the same for convenience, the name of the blog will be changing to Foster Benghazi. Rather than spending time writing about religious fundamentalists, science denial, and meaningless issues such as a woman’s right to control of her own body, marriage equality, and an end to racism, sexism, misogyny, rape culture, homophobia, and forced observance of other people’s religious beliefs, I will now be dedicating the space to nothing but stories about Benghazi. Do not think that means you won’t find variety, however, here at Foster Benghazi. Nothing could be further from the truth. You’ll see stories trying to convince you that Benghazi is a scandal, that it is a scandal worth paying attention to, that the blame for the scandal is completely Obama’s, that the Obama administration conspired with rock creatures from the center of the Earth, and the known terrorist sympathizer race of Rodent Hominids from the Moon to hide the truth about Benghazi from the American public, that Obama himself ordered the killing of the four Americans at Benghazi, that Hillary Clinton pulled the trigger that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens at Benghazi, and that Fox “News” and the conservative media have desperately tried to create a scandal out of Benghazi so that the GOP can reap political good fortune and turn four dead American citizens into votes on election day, thereby allowing them to sweep into power, stock the Supreme Court with Constitution raping judges, outlaw abortion and birth control, and pass huge tax cuts for the richest Americans, creating enough kick backs that every member of the GOP establishment (not the voters though. They get fleeced with the rest of them) can retire and move to a tropical island nation where brown skinned natives wear white gloves and full suits while serving them on the sun soaked beaches. Whoa, got a little out of control there. Did I mention Benghazi?

For a taste of whats to come, here it the first new story at Foster Benghazi by your blogger, Foster Benghazi.

6.7 million viewers tuned in for the 2015 Miss America competition Sunday night. Imagine the results if 6.7 million Americans demanded that the Obama administration explain why they killed Americans in Benghazi?(Get the idea yet?) The LA Times reports that there were 303,900 tweets about the pageant. Imagine the response if 303,900 tweets were posted demanding that Vice President Biden explain exactly why he personally beheaded 2 of the 4 Americans sacrificed to Allah during the false flag operation at Benghazi. (Okay, I am getting the hang of this.) For that matter, what is The LA Times doing reporting about something as insignificant as the Miss America competition when they could be devoting 110% of their resources to getting to the bottom of the real reason Hillary Clinton ordered the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, a move that ended the lives of three other Americans at Benghazi, and finally reveal that it was indeed “that time of the month” for Hillary, proving once again that a woman in the White House would result in nuclear war every 30 days. And Benghazi! (Almost forgot it that time.)

In less depressing news, while 6.7 million Americans did tune into the Miss America competition, a competition rumored to have been organized by the Obama administration as an attempt to distract the American public from Obama’s criminal actions in Benghazi, 16.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Sunday Night Football. While those 16.5 million should have been writing angry blog posts about the murderer in the White House and his plans to declare himself “Allah’s Chosen Ruler and Official Hitler for Life” the month before the 2016 election, a plan exposed to the public only after a careful examination of the Benghazi incident, there is a possible silver lining to those numbers. An anonymous source, who I quite possibly just made up in my head while typing this sentence, has informed me that 16 million Americans, outraged over the Stalin like actions of Hillary Clinton in Benghazi where she helped the Obama administration slaughter a rumored 3 million American citizens, with 4 confirmed deaths, only decided to watch Sunday Night Football because they figured their best chance of seeing a woman, standing in for Hillary in their minds, get punched in the face was by watching the NFL. Rather than watching football on the off chance a domestic battery breaks out, those 16 million should march on Washington and demand their God given right to punch Hillary in the face for her treasonous actions in (say it with me now) Benghazi.

I hope you enjoyed that taste of the new Foster Benghazi. I will return tomorrow with more hard hitting coverage of the biggest scandal our galaxy has ever experienced, the story some people are saying “makes Watergate look like lying about a blow job, the story sure to bring down not only the Obama administration, but the entire communist-Nazi-Muslim soaked Demon-cratic Party, Benghazi. Until then, this is Foster Benghazi signing off.

To turn off the satire for a second here, the worst thing (or one of the worst things) about this obsession over Benghazi on the right is the cover it provides Obama on real issues that actually should be scandalous. As surprising as it may sound to you, especially since I covered both the 2008 and the 2012 elections while endorsing and promoting Obama, and volunteering for both campaigns, I have one thing in common with many members of the GOP’s congressional membership; I want Obama to be impeached.

After that though, the differences are legion. While the Republicans want him impeached just so they can say they impeached him, and if they had the votes would push through an impeachment for something akin to lying about oral sex and debating the meaning of the word “is,” I want him impeached for the way he and his administration have routinely wiped their ass with the Constitution when it comes to secrecy, executive power, and the ability to detain indefinitely if not just outright execute American citizens. Mr. President, you lied to me and the rest of the American people when you said you would be different than Mr. Bush on these issues. You fooled me the first time, I am ashamed to admit. The second time you got my vote because the thought of the current GOP in power scares me into a panic attack. You got my votes because the system is broken. Obama is a center right politician who leans into wingnut territory when it comes to executive power and a few other issues, who can take practically any stance on any issue he feels like taking, and make any campaign promise that benefits him without any need to honor said promise, because the other party, in our brilliant 2 party system, has legitimate national candidates suggesting things such as letting the uninsured die outside the emergency room if they don’t have the money to pay, poking bears, poking Iran, poking both bears and Iran, starting more wars by fiat, banning contraception, declaring the USA a Christian Nation, and increasing the rate of capital punishment just as we start to learn how easy it is for an innocent man to end up on death row. Obama could sacrifice a baby on national tv during a special telecast that he forces HBO to air during the season 5 premier of Game of Thrones and I would shrug and say, “Well, he’s still better than Santorum.” How broken is the system? That last sentence is my response to that question.

Of course, no one will ever hold Obama accountable for using the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as his own personal cum towel. The GOP would love to impeach him, but they can’t go after him for actual legitimate impeachable offenses, because then they would have to admit George W. Bush committed the same crimes against the people as Obama. The Democrats have no reason to impeach him because they are creatures of the system like our President. As much as the Constitution is rallied around these days, it is such a depressing minority that have a problem with the executive branch deciding that whole “checks and balances” thing the founders came up with is a bit too outdated for the War on Terrorism age. And you Obama apologists out there may tsk at me, and say things like “Now Foster, Obama realizes the amount of power he has been given to deal with terrorism, but he has pledged, pledged!, not to use that power unjustly.” And even if I believed a thing he said after two campaigns worth of ignored promises (and I am not talking about promises he made that the GOP has blocked him on either, just promises that he has broken himself), even if I trusted him with, say, the power to indefinitely detain American citizens, I sure as hell wouldn’t trust a President Santorum, President Romney, President Ryan, President McCain, President Christie, President Perry, President Jindal, or hell, a President H.R. Clinton to honor that promise either.

Strange. It seems that throwing your wife under the bus is not the key to acquittal. I’d say that the ex-Governor should ask his lawyers for his money back, but who am I kidding? McDonnell’s lawyer was probably another “gift.”

It seems like it was only yesterday that Virginian Governor Bob McDonnell was dominating the news cycle, insisting that Republican lawmakers such as himself knew better than medical doctors. He was the elected Governor of the State of Virginia, a position that gave him the knowledge and the expertise to realize that what women truly needed before having an abortion was an ultrasound wand slammed inside of them as part of a medically unneeded procedure. When the medical professionals opposed him, arguing that the ultrasound was unnecessary and invasive, he argued that forcing women to undergo a procedure that they did not want was in their best interest. “What gives these smug medical doctors the right to disagree with me?,” I am sure he thought to himself during the controversy. “Sure, they went to medical school, and did all of that outrageous work it takes to become a doctor,” he almost certainly continued, talking to himself out loud as he walked through his house, “but I am the one who got elected Governor, and more important than that, I went to Regent!”

In spite of his M.A./J.D. from Christian Broadcasting Network University (which changed its name to Regent University for some unknown reason), doctors still claimed the invasive ultrasounds were medically unnecessary. Thanks to pundits such as RachelMaddow nicknaming him “Governor Ultrasound” and refusing to shut up like good little media lapdogs and let the elected men run this country like God intended, this was starting to threaten his national political aspirations. Insisting that sluts have wands shoved inside them for no relevant reason may play in parts of Virginia and other southern states, but so would stoning white women who take part in interracial relationships, removing the right to vote from non-whites and those not in possession of a penis, and “fixing” income inequality through a complicated system of forced servitude. On a national platform, legislating the forced entry of any object into vaginas is not a political winner. So Governor Bob backed off a bit. The sluts would still have to pay for a medically unnecessary ultrasound, but they would be spared the insertion of the wand into their body. Whether or not each procedure was to be witnessed by a clinic protester, with sign, pulled into the office off the street to shout hellfire at the patient by Government order is unknown. Yet even with this concession to the evil Satan sexting women, they would not let poor Bob alone: (When he went on national talk shows to talk about his policies.)

The host asked the governor a pretty straightforward question: “You backed an abortion bill initially that included a very invasive procedure as part of an ultrasound that the state would have required and then you backed off of that. Were you wrong to support that initially or did you simply back off because the political heat got turned up the way it did?”

What a vile smear-disguised-as-a-question by noted left wing attack hound David Gregory!* The way the press went after Governor McDonnell, you would think that he publicly endorsed a proposal to require women, against the wishes of physicians, to undergo an invasive, medically-unnecessary procedure, because some right-wing culture warriors wanted to shame patients, and when that became politically toxic, ended up signing an only-slightly-less outrageous measure that still requires Virginians to undergo state-mandated, medically-unnecessary ultrasounds, to satisfy the demands of far-right activists. What slander. Let’s look at the facts:

He publicly endorsed a proposal to require women, against the wishes of physicians, to undergo an invasive, medically-unnecessary procedure, because some right-wing culture warriors want to shame patients. McDonnell ended up signing an only-slightly-less outrageous measure that still requires Virginians to undergo state-mandated, medically-unnecessary ultrasounds, to satisfy the demands of far-right activists.

See?!? Oh, the things poor Governor Ultrasound had to deal with. And after all his maneuvering to be the obvious choice for Vice President, Mitt went ahead and picked equally-insane-but-much-more-attractive Paul Ryan to add “failed Vice Presidential candidate” to his CV. While stewing over not being chosen, Governor Ultrasound almost certainly sat at his desk, stroking a black cat with white ears. I totally believe that he then said, “You will regret this, Romney.” “Sure, one or two homosexuals may ignore your policies and vote for you because of Paul’s sculpted abs, his bulging biceps, his stylish hair, and his hypnotic eyes,” he would have said if I was writing a script for a gay porn film with this plot, as he tried to ignore his engorged member. “But I am a culture warrior, Mitt. I was going to make doctors give it to those sluts, no matter what their medical opinion was,” he more than likely shouted to the empty office, before turning on the intercom and asking the secretary to send in Steven, the new intern with the deep blue eyes and lips that made you wonder. “Tell him to lock the door behind him, Stella, and you can go home for the rest of the day as well,” he finished telling the secretary, in this fantasy version of the Governor’s Mansion as he undid his belt. “I was a culture warrior,” he could have sighed.

It seemed like only yesterday. I am sure the former Governor of Virginia longs for those yesterdays, no matter how disappointing it was to be passed over for an office taken so seriously that Sarah Palin was the previous candidate for his party, no matter how annoying it was to be called “Governor Ultrasound” by openly sinning homosexuals, no matter how disgusting it was to have to spend time talking about that icky pit of sin that women have between their legs, for now Governor Ultrasound is facing years spent with convicts who feel he should have to submit to forced internal ultrasounds**, if he is unfortunate enough to drop the soap.

Jurors in the public corruption trial of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, have found the couple guilty of several corruption counts. The McDonnells faced a 14-count indictment that alleged that they lent the prestige of the governor’s office to a Richmond area businessman and that, in exchange, the businessman lavished them with gifts and money.

….

the verdict — Robert McDonnell guilty of 11 charges; Maureen McDonnell guilty of nine, we will have to wait until the couple’s sentencing Jan. 6 to know what their fate will be. The couple could face decades in federal prison, though their actual sentence could fall well short of that.

The jury of seven men and five women spent nearly three days deliberating before announcing a verdict that left members of the McDonnell family in tears. The verdict, writes The Post’s Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind S. Helderman, sends a message that jurors, ” . . . believed the couple sold the office once occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to a free spending Richmond businessman for golf outings, lavish vacations and $120,000 in sweetheart loans.”

Note: the jury did acquit the couple of several charges pending against them — both were acquitted of lying on loan documents — but the verdict means, jurors thought the McDonnell’s lent the prestige of the governor’s office to former Star Scientific CEO Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in a nefarious exchange for his largesse.

Poor Gov. Ultrasound. He just wanted to be Vice President and to force doctors to shove things into dirty, slutty vaginas. After all, it was the only way to make those stupid sinning seductresses realize that a pregnancy resulted in a baby being born, and abortion is the murder of babies, not a cosmetic procedure that removes body fat, firms up the breasts, tones the buttocks and thighs, and is a feel good milestone in a woman’s life, one that all women should experience as much as possible, like Planned Parenthood teaches.

I bet his wife snuck in to the jury room and cast a feminist spell on the jury, forcing them to convict the innocent McDonnell. Before you even say it, she had to let herself get convicted as well, otherwise the conspiracy would have been exposed. Don’t worry, Obama will pardon her. Just you wait and see. Planned Parenthood got to her, and told her that they wouldn’t let her have anymore abortions if she didn’t get him in trouble with the law. Planned Parenthood is like that; the first abortion is free, and after that they got you hooked. Next thing you know they have you accusing some poor man of rape to get your next abortion fix.

Our doomed nation.

*It physically hurt to write that sentence, even as satire.

**I apologize for that. With rape culture as bad as it is, I probably shouldn’t be making a rape joke, even a prison rape joke. But this is Gov. Ultrasound, who was trying to make women who wanted an abortion submit to having another person insert an object into their vagina for no medical reason, no matter what the woman herself or her doctor thought, which is veering quite near to state-sponsored rape, so I couldn’t resist one prison rape jab. And he was enough of a bastard to try to get off by blaming his wife and painting her as a crazy, vindictive bitch, so fuck that guy.

I am a political junkie. I have been for as long as I can remember. I believe it was in 7th grade where I received my first detention hall punishment for turning my yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbon into an anti-war message. That was during the first Gulf War, and my interest never waned. At 16 I handed out campaign literature at a polling location in Martinsburg, PA, supporting soon to be President Clinton and other Democratic candidates while doing volunteer work for the AFL-CIO. Martinsburg is a farming community of about two thousand a short drive away from Altoona. It is a beautiful rural area, and like the vast majority of rural Pennsylvania, it is very conservative. Still, people were polite to my fellow volunteer and I, with a fair number of Republican voters striking up conversations with the two of us, not to debate politics, but rather just to say it was nice to see young people taking an interest in the nations system of government.

Even after I started to fill my veins with poison, I held onto my interest in politics. For those of you who have never seen the inside of a cell, believe me when I say you die a million little deaths when you are locked up. One such death that I will never forget was the re-election of King George the W. It haunted me, with my mind overwhelmed with unrealistic “what-if” scenarios; would the result have been the same if I would have been working the phones, going door to door, handing out literature, putting up signs, casting my ballot instead of being locked away? Rationally, of course I realized that one more person working against Bush wouldn’t have swung the election; that Kerry was a flawed candidate who wasn’t prepared to deal with the dirty tactics perfected by Karl Rove’s merry men with the character assassination of John McCain during the previous election cycle. And of course, perhaps most importantly, I didn’t live in Ohio anyway.

It is a subject that I love. It fascinates me, the strategy, the tactics, the struggle for a majority of votes for the honor of representing a portion of the population, in order to work for the good of the nation.

When the Tea Party Republicans were swept into office by way of the 2010 wave election on the promise of fiscal conservatism, most members of the reality-based community probably shrugged their shoulders with the thought, “how much harm can they do with one congressional term?” When they quickly turned their backs on pledges to work on fiscal matters to ram through as many anti-abortion bills as they could think up, I’m sure the thought. “Oh, so that’s how much damage they can do with one congressional term!” was on the minds of many rational people. As bad as the War on Women is, however, 201o was also a census year, so in addition to countless horrible anti-choice bills, the new Republicans now controlling many state legislatures also got the chance to influence the drawing of congressional districts.

Now let’s not lie to each other. When Democrats control the state legislatures, they gerrymander the hell out of districts as well. This is not a case where one party is pure and innocent. When we finally wake up and begin to reform our government, removing any authority on the make up of congressional districts from partisan hands will be high on my list of things that need changed, perhaps right behind the end of single representative districts. I seriously wonder what they were smoking when they decided to give the power to draw districts to the very people who get elected from those districts. It is a fact of the current political landscape; if the democrats are in power during a census year, the districts will favor the democrats, if republicans are in power, the map will favor them. In all likely hood, the GOP only still controls the House nationally because of the gerrymandering of 2010/2011. As you know if you pay attention, and/or care, I live in Pennsylvania. If anyone has any question whether congressional districts are redrawn because of partisan influence, look for a map of my states new districts. It is good for comedy, if nothing else.

A related bipartisan (depending on who is in power) horrible idea is making the rounds again this year; the awarding of Electoral votes by Congressional district. A bill to do this was just introduced (again) in the PA House. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, already award their electoral votes this way, and on the surface it does seem to have its merits. Under this system, instead of a states electoral votes going to the winner of the popular vote in the state, they are instead awarded to the winner of each congressional district. Currently, this is a GOP idea, since with the current landscape, the majority of PA’s electoral votes would have been awarded to Mitt Romney this year, instead of to Obama. During the Bush years, this was a Democratic idea, as the dems thought it would help them in places like Colorado.

Thankfully, most years that this idea is brought back from the trash heap, it poses little danger of becoming law. Either politicians feel it would be seen as too much of a power grab, or they realize that while it may benefit their party this year, it may hurt them in years to come.

My position, at least, is consistent — all such proposals should be eliminated, including the electoral college. Every single vote should count exactly the same and the popular vote should determine the winner.

I feel the need to highlight this, in case anyone hasn’t seen it. Yes, it is “old” news; you can consider it Huckabee’s Ghoul of the Year nomination if you so choose.

Speaking to my mother the day after the Newtown, CT massacre, I remarked that I was waiting for some one on the right to blame the shooting on feminism, homosexuality, the teaching of evolution, the removal of school prayer, or liberalism in general. Her response was expected; she always thinks I am exaggerating the insanity of the modern conservative movement.

Which is bad enough to earn a nomination, but the former Governor of Arkansas and presidential hopeful was far from finished: (Bolding is mine)

Then, over the weekend, on his own show, he took on “the predictable left” and its “vile and vicious reaction” to his statements. He said he wasn’t merely talking about school prayer – oh, no, haters! “It’s the fact that people sue a city so we aren’t confronted with a manger scene or Christmas carol … Churches and Christian-owned businesses are told to surrender their values under the edict of government orders to provide tax-funded abortion pills.”On his Web page, he posted a version of his Fox monologue, in which he wrote, “We dismiss the notion of natural law and the notion that there are moral absolutes and seemed amazed when some kids make it their own morality to kill innocent children. We diminish and even hold in contempt the natural family of a father and mother creating and then responsibly raising the next generation and then express dismay that kids feel no real connection to their families or even the concept of a family.” He also railed about how “our kids would rather have ear buds dangling from their ears, fingers attaching to a smartphone, and face attached to a computer screen” and “we teach that God was not involved in our origins, that our very lives are biological happenstances.”

There you have it. It wasn’t a mentally ill lunatic with easy access to military grade weaponry that caused one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. It was “abortion pills,” iPhones, evolution and homosexuals.

Okay, so Huckabee is the winner of Ghoul of December, but of the year?

It’s a familiar Huckabee refrain. Last summer, after the deadly shooting in an Aurora movie theater, Huckabee went on Fox to say, “We don’t have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem. And since we’ve ordered God out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn’t act so surprised … when all hell breaks loose.” This was right around the same time Huckabee was busily attempting to cleanse our great nation of the gay menace by declaring a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to support the chain’s stance on biblical marriage and “Godly values.”

Yes, of the year. I’ll let Mary Elizabeth Williams (who wins my personal internet writer of the year award) close this post, and the year, with her own words:

It’s an appalling smear of a wide variety of groups, and a breathtakingly ignorant view. And it’s strikingly similar in spirit to Mitt Romney’s response, during the presidential debates, to a question on gun violence — that “to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone — that’s a great idea.” It suggests that somehow prayer can prevent anybody from being mentally ill, that hetero marriage cures murder, and that having a manger in the town square can stop a gunman from blasting his way into a school. It’s grotesque and hateful, even by Mike Huckabee standards. But if he’s even remotely correct that we’ve all been so great at ordering God out of American life, what in hell do we have to do to successfully exile Mike Huckabee as well?

Seriously, I know all politicians are liars. In the past I’ve pointed out several broken promises, if not outright lies, from President Obama, and to be completely honest I doubt a politician could be completely honest with the electorate and still have a chance in hell of winning any office. That being said, the Romney campaign seems to have set a new record. Is there no lie too brazen to tell? No position too closely held that it can not be changed for appearance? Multiple Mitt has not only flip-flopped on a few issues. He has not only lied about a few things. He has done both so effectively that I do not believe it is possible for anyone but Mendacious Mitt to know his true views on most issues. Which of his dozen or so stances on abortion, for example, does he actually subscribe to? If elected, will we get the moderate Mitt of the recent weeks or the “severely” conservative Mitt of the primary season? The “reach across the aisle” Mitt he claims he will be, or the “800 vetoes(707 of them overturned)” Mitt from his days as governor? And most disturbingly (to me at least), how can the American electorate actually be considering making a man who refuses to be nailed down to any position President of the United States?

Now after so many lies from Mitt and his campaign, does this one actually surprise anyone? From ThinkProgress:

Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters. A source passed along the following packet of documents, which was distributed to volunteers at a Romney campaign training in Racine on October 25th. In total, eight such trainings were held across the state in the past two weeks and 17 since late September.

One blatant falsehood occurs on page 5 of the training packet, which informed poll watchers that any “person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery” isn’t eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote.

The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with. On page 3 of the packet, Romney poll workers were instructed to hide their affiliation with the campaign and told to sign in at the polls as a “concerned citizen” instead. As Kristina Sesek, Romney’s legal counsel who just graduated from Marquette Law School last year, explained, “We’re going to have you sign in this election cycle as a ‘concerned citizen.’ We’re just trying to alleviate some of the animosity of being a Republican observer up front.”

A new ThinkProgress investigation has found that in Iowa, Romney poll watchers are being trained to watch for voters who show up without a photo ID, even though no voter ID law exists in the state.

In a training video for Romney poll watchers in Iowa, the narrator tells volunteers to be on the lookout for anytime “a voter fails to show a voter ID and they are still permitted to vote.” If that happens, he says, “alert the legal team so they can handle the problem.” The text of the campaign’s slide, however, says something contradictory, instructing volunteers when poll workers should check the voter’s ID. Despite the mixed messages, the slide ends with: “If an election worker is not checking photo ID, please call the legal hotline immediately.”

I’m sure you have already read about this story somewhere already, but if not yet another GOP Senate candidate has pledged his unwavering support to the rights of fetuses forcibly implanted without the consent of the mother, at the obvious expense of the rights of said mother. Yeah, that’s right, yet one more voice added to the choir of “we don’t give a shit if you got raped or not, you are having that fucking baby!”

“I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said at a debate. “And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

“For speaking from my heart, from the deepest level of my faith, I cannot apologize,” he said.

“I would be less than faithful to my faith if I said anything other than life is precious. I think it is a gift from God. I don’t think God would ever want anyone harmed, sexually abused, or raped. I think it’s wrong when someone wants to take what I said and twist it,” he said.

Once again, here is Mourdock’s comment, untwisted:

“And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Let’s see if I can sort this out. God doesn’t want you to get raped, but he isn’t going to stop you from getting raped. (probably because you were dressed like a slut and asking for it anyways) And if God wants you to get pregnant but you are not cooperating with his plans, and you just happen to get raped, well, you have to have the rape baby because that’s what God intended…

Look, all joking aside, the God Mourdock worships is one sick fuck. Is the rape baby like a consolation prize? “I didn’t want you to get raped, but since you did, here is a gift from me!” “Look, it is God. I was feeling really horrible that you got raped while I was busy damning gay people to hell, so I was trying to figure out a way to make it up to you. Here’s what I came up with; a baby so you can relive the rape constantly and never put it behind you! Aren’t I kind and just?”

Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the US Senate, is standing behind Tea Party Senate candidate from Indian, Richard Mourdock, who in a debate the other night said that when a rape victim gets pregnant, God intended the pregnancy and it’s a “gift.”

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About the Author

Described as "intelligent but self-destructive," Foster Disbelief spent his twenties furiously attempting to waste his potential in a haze of religion and heroin. Science and atheism allowed him to escape his twin addictions and he now spends his days attempting to make the most of his three remaining brain cells.